Rest Areas Combined-USA Discussion

First and foremost - dittos on thanking you for maintaining this file!
I spent hours and hours last weekend customizing the last release to remove the line items for trucks and turnouts without rest room facilities but keeping those with scenic views. Your new file's data cleansing and format would have made the task so much easier!

Question: Does it make much difference if the last two trailing positions of the longitude or latitude get truncated? When I open a csv file in Excel, I lose the trailing two digits. Before I retired I wrote many COBOL interface programs that used csv files as input. Excel was not my friend. If the trailing digits do make a difference,
I suggest step 7a would be to highlight column A and click the <-.0 .00
icon twice to retain the trailing digits, and step 7b to do the same for column B. Then proceed to step 8.

If it doesn't make a difference, please ignore my suggestiob and forgive me for wasting your time.

It sounds like you just need to set the column format prperty for the coordinate fields in Excel. I use OpenOffice Calc rather than Eccel, but I have to do the same thing in that product or else I will end up with only 2 digits to the right of the decimal point. When I first open the file, the coordinates show as xxx.xx. After I change the column format to xxx.xxxxxx, all the hidden digits automatically appear and will be saved. Maybe that is what you are suggesting as a change in jgermann's instructions. I am not familiar with the rules in Excel.

I have used Excel for my files from the beginning. You may be referring to the fact that excel only displays 5 digits in the standard width of the cell, but if you widen the cell, all digits that are typed are in fact displayed, Could this possibly be what you are talking about?

Excel will never lose (or truncate) any part of the coordinates.

As several have stated above, Excel may not "display" fields in the way one might hope for. For example, when I open the Rest Area file, Line 2 looks like this
-87.4185 30.57584 AL,I-10,WB [RR, PT,VM, Pets, HF]

I take my cursor and left-click-and-hold on the A in the heading and then drag right to highlight through Col D before releasing the mouse button. Then, in the menu, I click on Format, then on Column and then on AutoFitSelection. Now, I see all of the data in the file, which was hidden by the default formatting.

Notice that you now see the extra decimals in the coordinates, and Column C gets very wide.

This discussion is being closed. We are making some changes to the file and a new discussion thread will be started when that change is made.
Until then any questions regarding this file should be directed to me via my contact tab.

~Angela